Re: [PATCH 1/5] x86, nmi: Add new nmi type 'external'

[Don Zickus <dzickus@redhat.com>]

On Wed, May 07, 2014 at 06:27:46PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > [...]  But I guess in theory, if a PMI NMI comes in and before the 
> > cpu can accept it and GHES NMI comes in, then it would suffice to 
> > say it may get dropped.  That would be not be good.  Though the race 
> > would be very small.
> > 
> > I don't have a good idea how to handle that.
> 
> Well, are GHES NMIs reasserted if they are not handled? I don't know 
> but there's a definite answer to that hardware behavior question.

I can't find anything that explicitly says the NMI will be re-asserted, so
I will it does not.  Andi, do you know?  (I am not sure who maintains GHES
any more).

> 
> > On the flip side, we have the same exact problem, today, with the 
> > other common external NMIs (SERR, IO).  If a PCI SERR comes in at 
> > the same time as a PMI, then it gets dropped.  Worse, it doesn't get 
> > re-enabled and blocks future SERRs (just found this out two weeks 
> > ago because of a dirty perf status register on boot).
> > 
> > Again, I don't have a solution to juggle between PMI performance and 
> > reliable delivery.  We could do away with the spinlocks and go back 
> > to single cpu delivery (like it used to be).  Then devise a 
> > mechanism to switch delivery to another cpu upon hotplug.
> > 
> > Thoughts?
> 
> I'd say we should do a delayed timer that makes sure that all possible 
> handlers are polled after an NMI is triggered, but never at a high 
> rate.

Hmm, I was thinking about it and wanted to avoid a poll as I hear
complaints here and there about the nmi_watchdog constantly wasting power
cycles with its polling.

I was wondering if I could do a status read outside the spinlock, then if
a bit is set, just grab the spin_lock and re-read the status.  But then
looking at the GHES code, I am not sure if it is as easy to read the
status bit as it is for a PCI_SERR/IO_CHK NMI.

Andi thoughts here?  Should I poke Tony Luck?

Otherwise I can set up the polling if that doesn't work.

Cheers,
Don